ISPs won’t be forced to disconnect music pirates, according to government Intellectual Property Minister David Lammy.
in an interview with The Times, the MP said the Government had scrapped the idea of making ISPs cut off suspect P2P pirates, which Westminster was mooting as late as 2008.
“I’m not sure it’s actually going to be possible,” Lammy said, in a surprisingly straight forward admission. It marks a major U-turn from a year ago when Culture Secretary Andy Burnham said there was “serious legislative intent” to force ISPs to make any customers found pirating songs and movies go and sit on the naughty step without broadband access in a three strikes policy which some ISPs protested heavily against.
Probably just as well seeing as it’s incredibly difficult to prove that a person, rather than an IP address, has been thieving intellectual property via P2P filesharing, and anyone who knows their stuff could easily dodge detection anyway.
Has the government even heard of Rapid Share? We’re guessing not, cos they might want to check that out, there’s a fair whack of stolen stuff on there as well. Anonymous too. What? We’re just saying.
(Via The Times)
